awakening to a bewildered consciousness emily granville opened her eyes in a glare of light which stung her vision so sharply that the lids shut instantly in intuitive defense. she could feel the soothing warmth of a fire near by. she was prone on her back. an attempt to move her limbs produced a sensation of being bound. turning her head slightly from the direction of the fire she opened her eyes again timorously upon a sky burgeoning in a new crescent moon and a myriad of stars. the moon and stars seemed so close that she fancied that all she had to do was lift a hand to touch them. lowering her gaze she saw the sea and heard its wild white horses neighing.
with a cry of fright the castaway started into full consciousness, every part of her racked and a-throb with pain. by a great effort of will she struggled into a sitting posture and then to her knees. the firelight blinded her. all was still within its radius. an apprehension that she alone had survived the riving of the island overwhelmed her.
she remembered the cataclysmic upheaval which had flung her headlong as she stood beside lavelle where he worked at the boat. she had gone to him to ask him to pause but a minute to take a little food and drink. he had answered her harshly, she had been thinking; and then a mountainous wave had hurled him against her; into her arms, in fact. she had held him with all her strength, but the sea must have been stronger. it must have taken him. her memory stopped there.
"captain! my friend!" she called in anguish to the night. it returned no answer. the wind lashed her face and throat as if determined she should be still. she breasted it with the fierceness of abandonment, lifting her aching arms and sobbing to the heavens:
"my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? why did you take him and leave me?"
even, as this supplication burst from her chang entered the circle of light, carrying an armful of wood. rowgowskii followed at his heels, similarly burdened.
"all lite, lady! no be flaid!" called the chinaman. he dropped the wood as he spoke and ran to her side. her gaze went expectantly beyond him into the darkness. but the one for whom she looked did not appear.
"the captain—where——"
emily could not utter another word. she sank back, supporting herself by one arm. she was afraid to listen to the giant's answer.
"him all lite—bimeby, lady," said chang.
her heart surged in joy.
"he is alive?" she gasped. "where is he?"
she straightened again on her knees.
chang drew back the edge of the boat sail, a part of which had also covered her. there lay "the shadow" of the lost cambodia with the bullet wound in his brow reopened where the sea had mauled him.
"thank god," emily murmured, seeing lavelle stir.
she crawled on her knees to his side and felt the pulse of the hand which chang drew out of the canvas. its faintness killed the gladness which had come so swiftly into her heart.
"he—he—is dying, chang!" she cried.
"no can be; no can be," answered the chinaman with fiery emphasis. "him more stlong. go-an get better more klick. no can kill master so leasy."
"how long has he been this way, chang?"
"not more one hour. how you feet, lady?"
for the first time emily was conscious of a tearing pain in her ankles and insteps. it was more intense than the stab-like thrusts which were piercing the rest of her body. wondering what could have happened to her she turned so that she could see her feet. the trim, delicate ankles were swollen and the insteps were bruised and bleeding.
"velly solly, lady," said chang soothingly and in the manner of a father comforting a little child. "you velly blave. you velly stlong."
as he spoke the chinaman gently lifted one injured foot. she shrank from his touch and put out a hand to thrust him away.
"you be 'flaid flor chang?" asked the giant wistfully. the glance with which he looked up at her made the woman ashamed that she had obeyed the impulse of littleness. she caught rowgowskii staring at her from across the fire. his glance was a challenge to all the fineness of her being.
"i beg your pardon, chang. i am not afraid of you," she said. she withdrew her protesting hand.
"you my master flen. he say by me when i tell him you hol' him han' in boat: 'chang, maybe i go-an die. all hell kom-men you go-an save she.' bimeby to-night when big sea kom-men you save my master. you save chang. you like me die—i go-an die flor you. you must no be flaid."
the while chang talked his long yellow fingers were going swiftly over emily's feet. a surgeon's skill was in their touch. his head was bent, hearkening, where he manipulated the ankle and toe joints, for a sound which would betoken a fracture.
"no bone bloke," he announced with finality.
"thank you, chang," emily said gratefully, and presently she drew from him an account of what had happened following the upheaval.
chang had been standing near the fire on the hillside. he had been thrown down even as she and lavelle were. the island had broken apart and a great sea had come and gone quickly. the earth went out from under him. it flaked away, carrying him down to the sea with it. he could not stop himself. just as he was rolling over the edge of the cliff he felt an arm and caught hold of it. it checked his descent. it was lavelle's arm that he caught and, drawing himself up, he found her clutching lavelle with both hands around his other wrist. her feet were twisted in the root of a tree which the sea had washed out of the earth. it was this root which had saved all of them.
emily could understand now how she came to feel like one who had been broken on a wheel. she could not imagine where she had found the strength to withstand the terrific forces which, according to the giant's description, had beset her. she believed she had acted unconsciously, but at least, she thought, she had proved herself not useless. she found comfort in this momentary reflection, nor did she suspect that a great, new power—a power like unto which there is no other—had dawned in her life.
"i catch him master," added chang, "but you hol' flor him like a marther hol' him litty bit chile when him big bear kom-men in winter. chang bring you here flor topside. you eye close. him master eye close. him head must flor stlike 'gainst boat: maybe lock hit him. him boat all go way."
a weary faintness made emily's eyelids droop for a second. chang leaped to his feet and crossed to the other side of the fire. she watched him where he lifted one of the boat's breakers and poured a cup full of water. he was back in a moment offering it to her. she drank sparingly. she refused to eat anything. she asked how long it had been since the sundering of the island and when chang told her that not more than an hour had passed she found it hard to believe him. it seemed to emily that it must have happened many nights before.
the giant's answer was hardly away from his lips when a shudder went through the hill on the crest of which he, driving rowgowskii to help him, had fixed the encampment and rebuilt the fire.
"what flor? whachamalla you?" snarled chang at the menacing earth. the next breath brought a scolding tone into his quaint voice. "him go-an be night velly long time, mr. islan'. more better you go-an sleep, eh?"
the whimsicality of this speech and the half-quizzical expression in chang's face brought a faint smile to the lips of the white woman.
"you're a rare soul, chang," she whispered.
"him all same clay-zee, dlunken sailor man, this mr. islan'," the giant chattered on. he saw that he amused emily. and always he spoke of the future certainly. so far as his speech and manner were concerned he might have been safe in port with a pleasant city in view instead of on the border line of the world beyond. like lavelle, he possessed the marvelous power of renewing one's faith.
of his master the chinaman spoke as the children of the orient speak only of their strange good gods. he told how lavelle nine years before in rangoon had saved his life from the murderous hands of a drunken, mutinous crew and how his way thereafter had been the captain's way and would be to the end. he recalled, too, the night in shanghai of which elsie had told her. he wrung tears from her in recounting the fearful winning of the kau lung to yokohama. she saw the knife scars on the arm lying outside the sail and the scars on chang's. the wounds of these men assumed a sacredness in her eyes.
"my master all same chang joss," was the way the giant summed up his hero. "no 'flaid flor enny-sling! nobody! him say, 'chang, die.' must flor me die."
emily recalled the strange scene between them at the boat and she understood the truth of this.
lavelle, stirring with a moan, interrupted the serang, who bent his head and listened, ear close to the unconscious man's lips.
"him sleep now—more better. no sleep las' night. no sleep to-day. him velly tli-ed."
emily leaned over at the giant's whisper and caught the measured, easy breathing of a tired sleeper. yet she heard something else also.
"—home soon—dearheart. gold girl—wonder——" he murmured, and emily wondered what manner of woman it was who was waiting across seas for this man's home-coming. it was not thus he would speak of the mother to whom he had set out to return. it could not be such a woman as shanghai elsie. the remembrance of what rowgowskii had said to her in the boat flashed into her mind. she put it away instantly. she resented it. she knew, as only it is given to a woman to know, that it was not to a mate like elsie that this man would go.
"god bring him safely to her," she prayed in her pity for the woman of whom "the shadow" dreamed, and she knew not that she prayed for herself.
